“I feel perfectlyhideous,” Doodlebug muttered.
Jules pulled alongside the curb in front of the Banks Street Bar and Grill, two blocks west of Jesuit High School. The tremendous crush of parents and potential enrollees who’d come out for the school’s open house prevented him from parking any closer. “Shaddup already. You got no reason to be whinin‘. I let you pick out your own outfit at Wal-Mart, didn’t I?”
“And a fat lot of good that freedom of choice did me. Ye gods… even their Women’s Department was filled with the most awful grotesqueries imaginable. But the Boys’ Department-that shapeless denim, those threadbare sports logo T-shirts-all I can say is, I pray it’ll beanother forty-eight years before I shop for boys’ clothing again. And must I wear this ridiculous baseball cap?”
Jules climbed out of the car onto pavement so broken and tilted it looked like the floor of a fun house. “It’s either that or chop off your hair, pal.”
“But plenty of boys wear their hair long nowadays.”
“Not at Jesuit they don’t.”
They walked toward the imposing three-story brick edifices that overwhelmed Banks Street. In contrast to the Catholic grandeur of the school buildings, the surrounding houses were tired and dingy, leaning wearily shoulder to shoulder like a police roundup of overworked hookers crowded into a freight elevator.
They walked into the main academic building and were immediately immersed in a sea of anxious parents, overfriendly faculty, and too-bored-for-words pubescents. Doodlebug stared coldly at the current Jesuit students, standing around nonchalantly in their light brown, paramilitary-looking uniforms.
“What a perfect bunch of Fascists-in-training,” he whispered harshly to Jules. “Cannon fodder for the next Nathan Knight campaign. And the Jesuits are supposedly theintellectuals of the Catholic Church? This descent into the inferno makes me evenmore grateful to you for making me miss high school.”
Jules spotted a nun in the crowd. He grabbed Doodlebug’s sleeve and pulled him over to her. “ ‘Scuse me, Sister. My boy and me wanna take a look at your library. Can you maybe point us in the right direction?”
“Oh, you must mean our Resource Center!”
“Yeah, I guess so. That where you got yer books and stuff?”
“Oh, sir, our Resource Center has much more than justbooks! It’s also our computer hub, audiovisual lab, and creative graphics shop. It’s one of the finest knowledge facilities of any high school in the South. We’re very,very proud of our Resource Center.”
“Yeah, I can see that. So where is it?”
“Just take those stairs at the end of the hall to the second floor, then turn right. Or we have an elevator just around that corner there.”
“We’ll take the stairs. Thanks, Sister. Have a swell summer.”
The short nun sniffed the air like a groundhog emerging from its hole on the first day of spring. “Say, do you smell somethingburning?”
Jules was already pulling his companion down the crowded hall. He grimaced, then cuffed the side of Doodlebug’s head. “D.B.! Put out that damn cigarette!”
They ducked into the stairwell. Both vampires sighed with relief. Jules headed straight for a water fountain tucked in the corner and splashed cold liquid down the neck of his shirt, dousing his smoldering skin.
“You justhad to chat up a nun, didn’t you?” Doodlebug said, fanning his burning arms. “I didn’t appreciate that whack to the head, by the way.”
Jules tossed handfuls of water in his friend’s direction. “Look, I found out where the library is, didn’t I?”
“Resource Center.”
“Whatever. Sorry about the wallop. I had to think fast.”
“Next time, let your brain do the thinking, not your hands.”
They climbed the stairs to the second floor. The Resource Center wouldn’t have looked out of place at a medium-sized university. The facility seemed to have more computers than books. After a few minutes of searching, they found the yearbook collection in a dimly lit, musty-smelling annex room.
The dusty wooden shelves were lined with thick, hardbound editions ofThe Jayson dating back to the 1920s. Jules scooped up ten of the big volumes, starting with the 1976-77 edition and ending with the one dated 1985-86. He set the stack of yearbooks on a nearby table with a heavy thud.
“According to what Mo told us, he coulda been here at Jesuit any of these years.”
“Let’s get cracking, then,” Doodlebug said. He looked around him, clearly uncomfortable, and hugged his arms to his sides. “The sooner we’re out of here and away from all these crucifixes, the happier I’ll be.”
“Amen to that, brother.”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to recognize him?”
“Oh, yeah,” Jules said, laying the first volume flat and skipping over the sections on Student Life and Athletics to the pages with portraits of freshman students. “I got his ugly puss memorized. Maybe he’s a little younger and a little browner in these yearbooks than he was when I saw him, but there’s no way I’d mistake him for anybody else.”
Ninety minutes later the multitude of crucifixes on the walls and in the pages of the yearbooks had begun taking their toll. Both vampires were sweating profusely. Jules was able to skim the first three or four yearbooks fairly quickly; the number of black students during those years was small, only four to six a page. As the years became more recent, the numbers of black students increased. He found himself having to concentrate more closely, matching the sharp chin and cold, cruel eyes of recent memory against a larger number of possible matches. Many of the faces were soft and relatively innocent; these he was able to discount pretty quickly. Others seemed warier, already cynical and hardened… even kids lucky enough to go to Jesuit weren’t immune to the tough influence of the streets, Jules had to remind himself.
He wiped his clammy forehead with his sleeve, then cracked open the 1981-82Jayson and flipped to the freshman photos and descriptions. In no time one portrait leapt off the page and drop-kicked him square on the nose.
“Holy shit… I found him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure!” He quickly read the description beneath the photo. “Look at this-the little fucker was a member of thedebate team! No wonder he talked such a blue streak before pissin‘ on my coffin.”
“Let me see.” Doodlebug pulled the yearbook to his side of the table. Jules prodded the portrait with a thick forefinger. “Malik Raddeaux?That’s his name? I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have expected his real name to be so close to hisnom de guerre.”
“Talk English, would ya?”
“To his gang name. Itis pretty clever, though-substitutingRado forRaddeaux.”
Jules pulled the book back to his side and read the capsule description again. “Be sure and compliment him when you meet him.”
“That won’t be long in coming. Now that we have a name to feed to my contact at thePicayune, we should be able to land some solid leads.”
“Maybe we won’t even hafta bother with your pansy pal at the newspaper.”
Doodlebug frowned. “Why not? You have a better idea?”
Jules smiled triumphantly. “You didn’t read the whole description, did you? TheseJayson‘s, they’re pretty thorough. Didya notice how they list the names of siblings who attend other Catholic schools? Our boy Malik’s got himself a sister.”
The first Elisha Raddeaux listed in the phone book turned out to be a fifty-eight-year-old great-grandmother raising two generations of children in a three-room New Orleans East apartment. The second Elisha Raddeaux had left town, leaving no forwarding address with her former landlord or neighbors. The third and final Elisha Raddeaux lived in a modest but well-kept camelback shotgun on Laurel Street, a couple of blocks from Tipitina’s Uptown Music Club.
The neighborhood was on the dicey side. Several houses hadn’t been occupied in months, maybe years, and were well tattooed with the tags of various neighborhood gangs. Piles of dirty gravel filled the street’s larger potholes, poverty-row Band-Aids for a road in dire need of major surgery. Abandoned shopping carts lay on their sides in the high grass that fronted most of the lots.
In contrast, the house they’d come to visit was recently painted, with a tall, straight fence surrounding it, a neatly trimmed lawn, and a large tin-roofed utility shed out back. Jules tried opening the gate, then noticed it was locked with a neon-green Kryptonite U-lock. Luckily, the gate had a buzzer attached. He rang it.
A moment later a young black woman cautiously pushed aside the drapes from her front window. She looked to be about the right age-late twenties or early thirties, which would fit with the information Jules had gleaned from the yearbook. She opened her window a few inches, just enough to make a shouted conversation feasible.
“What do you want? It’s late.”
“You Elisha Raddeaux?” Jules asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Depends what you need to see Elisha Raddeaux about.”
“We’re here to talk about your brother Malik.”
Her expression remained coldly impenetrable. “I don’t got no brother Malik. You got the wrong address. Go bother somebody else.”
She started to close her window. The humidity made it stick. She cursed. Doodlebug took advantage of the brief opening. Dressed in a flattering silk blouse and high-slit skirt, he was the model of confidence again. “Ms. Raddeaux? We have a very important reason to speak with your brother. We know all about his special condition. We need to warn him about a new bloodborne disease that’s been ravaging the blood-drinking community. It’s vital that we reach him.”
She stopped struggling with the window. “You on the level with this? You sayin‘ he might be in some kinda health trouble?”
“My name is Debbie Richelieu, Ms. Raddeaux. I’m a physician and researcher from California. My staff and I have been tracking the transmission of this new disease across the country. I’ve made it my business to get word of a few simple precautions to every known blood drinker. My associates and I overlooked the initial outbreak of AIDS, and we’re determined not to repeat that mistake with this new syndrome. Will you talk with us?”
She stared suspiciously at Jules. “Who’s the fat dude?”
“That’s Julius. My assistant. Don’t worry, he’s quite harmless.”
The drapes fell shut. A few seconds later the front door opened and Elisha Raddeaux walked across her well-tended front lawn to the gate. Jules was surprised to see that she was wearing a black catsuit and a matching, rhinestone-trimmed jacket; given the late hour, he’d expected her to walk out in a rumpled bathrobe. Her tiny waist flared into an impressive set of hips, wide enough to carry a week’s worth of groceries and half a Little League team. The fullness of her hips wasn’t mirrored in the contours of her face, however. As she unlocked the gate, Jules could see some of the same angular harshness in her features that he’d noted in her brother’s.
She warily hefted the U-lock in her fist and swung open the gate. “C’mon in. I guess wedo have somethin‘ to talk about, after all.”
“You two go on ahead,” Doodlebug said. “I’ll be right in. I left something in the car.”
Jules followed her into the house. He’d been inside dozens of camelbacks just like this one, enough that he had a pretty complete mental picture of what the interior would probably look like. This one didn’t fit the bill at all. The furniture was surprisingly modern and high rent. The walls of the long, narrow living room were lined with European-looking leather sofas, German stereo components, and a flat-panel TV big as a casino billboard. A freestanding waterfall burbled in one corner. The dining room was decorated with real oil paintings, not prints. Several of them featured jazz combos, Jules noted with appreciation.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” he mumbled.
“Thanks,” she answered, barely looking at him. “So what’s the story with this disease? And how did you know Malik is a bloodsucker?”
Jules smiled weakly and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just the assistant. We gotta wait for Dr. Richelieu. He, uh,she’s the expert.”
“Fine.” She looked at him with more interest. Did her eyes flare with a glimmer of recognition, or was this just his jumpy imagination acting up again?
Whatever the look was, it made him uncomfortable. He took a few steps toward one of the couches.
The leather-swathed cushions looked soft and inviting. “Mind if I sit down?”
She pulled one of the hard-backed oak chairs away from the dining table for him. “Not at all.”
Doodlebug came through the front door. “Sorry to keep everyone waiting. Did I miss anything?”
“I’m not sure I can be of much help, Doctor,” the woman said. “Me and Malik… we ain’t what you’d call close. I ain’t seen him in a long time. Maybe five, six years.“
“Do you have any idea where we might find him?”
“Oh, I hear he still be around town somewhere. Here and there. He never did stay in one place very long. Time comes to dust the apartment, he just moves on to a fresh one.“
“Do you have friends in common? Any relations who might know how we could get in touch?”
“Before I put you in touch with other folks to bug in the middle of the night, how about tellin‘ me some more about this disease?“
Doodlebug sat down at the table and folded his hands together thoughtfully. “It’s a degenerative bone disease. Very painful. It leads to weak, easily fractured bones and can’t be reversed once it passes a certain stage. During the early, reversible stages, no symptoms are apparent; the disease can only be detected through a special blood test of my own devising.“
Elisha Raddeaux looked less than fully convinced. “And how does one catch this nasty bone disease?”
“By ingesting the blood of an HIV-positive individual or a carrier of the hepatitis C virus.”
“I see.” She stared long and hard, first at Jules, then at Doodlebug. “Look, I’ll do my best to help you. There’s no love lost between me and my brother. I sure don’t approve of what he is and some of the things he done. But I figure nobody deserves to be sufferin‘ with no disease. Give me some time to think, and maybe I can come up with somethin’ for you two to go on. In the meantime, can I get you anything? I got some crumb cake, and I can make a pot of coffee.”
Jules’s face lit up. “Hey, thanks! Some coffee’d begreat. I’ll pass on that crumb cake, though.”
“Anything for you, Doctor?”
Doodlebug smiled and shook his head. “Oh, no, thank you. I ate just before we came over.”
She stood from the table and headed for the kitchen. “It’ll be a few minutes. I got one of them old-fashioned percolators that takes a while to get goin‘.” She closed the kitchen door behind her.
Jules gave Doodlebug the thumbs-up sign. “Hey, pal,” he whispered, “that’s some great bullshit story you came up with. Bone disease…yeeuuch! So, whadda ya think? She on the level? You think she’s gonna help us out?”
Doodlebug eyed the kitchen door pensively. “I’m not sure. Something seems off. Her body language didn’t match her conversation-”
From the far side of the door Jules heard the distinctive tones of a push-button phone’s keys being pressed. “Shit! She’s makin‘ a call! She’s rattin’ us out!”
He started to get up from the table, but Doodlebug caught his arm. “Don’t worry about that.” The slender vampire grinned. “While I was outside, I took a little precaution. She won’t be getting through to anyone until after South Central Bell makes a service call.”
Jules overheard a soft expletive in the kitchen, followed by more button pushing, followed by still more, and stronger, profanity.
“Guess this means I won’t be gettin‘ my coffee,” Jules said wistfully.
He jumped as there was a loud crash in the kitchen. Now hedid get up from the table. “Hey! You, uh, you okay in there?“
“I’m fine,” the woman’s voice answered, a little too strongly. “Just had a little accident. No problem.”
“You need a hand with somethin‘?”
“No!I’m justfine! Don’t you concern yourself none.”
Jules looked uncertainly at his companion. His resolve hardened. He went to the door and opened it.
“Die-ie, you fat fuckah!”
She charged him like an enraged lioness, slashing wildly with jagged wooden pieces from a broken bar stool. He dodged as best he could. But one of her improvised stakes connected with an ample love handle, shredding his new safari suit and taking a decent-sized chunk of him with it.
“Ahhh!You fuckin‘bitch!”
The other stake gouged his cheek, leaving a bloody trail. He tried grabbing her, but she was astoundingly fast and strong. She shrugged off his bear hug as if he were made of tinfoil, bouncing him into the dining room wall and spilling him heavily to the floor.
Then she whirled on Doodlebug. What happened next occurred almost too quickly for Jules’s pain-clouded eyes to follow. Doodlebug moved like a ninja from a Bruce Lee flick. First his foot crashed into her wrist, sending a stake flying. She thrust her other dagger at his chest. He ducked low and bent her weapon arm sharply over his shoulder. Jules heard a sharp break and an even sharper scream. Then Doodlebug became a blur of motion. His whirling kick exploded against the side of her head and sent her flying against the dining room wall.
She still wasn’t down for the count. Jules struggled to clear his vision. His side burned like hell. He looked down-his left side, from mid-rib cage down, was drenched with blood. Weirdly, the front of his safari suit was stained with brown smudges. He rubbed one of the smudges. Some of the brown came off on his finger; oily, like wet paint. Makeup. It was makeup.
“Jules! I need some help here! I can’t hold her much longer!”
“Youfucks!” she screamed. “You won’t get away withnothin‘! I’ll kill you! Fuck youboth up!”
Jules stared at Malice X’s sister. Most of the makeup on her arms had rubbed off during their brief struggle. Her exposed skin was deathly gray.
She was a vampire.
“Jules! Snap out of it! Or do you want to have to fight her all over again?”
She was a vampire, just like he was. He struggled to get up from the floor. She writhed and thrashed in
Doodlebug’s tight grasp, trapped in his arms like a live electrical wire. A vampire.
“Jules! Grab one of those stakes she dropped! Run her through before she breaks away!”
He felt like he was moving in slow motion. Like he was swimming through cream of mushroom soup. He leaned down and picked one of the stakes off the floor. She spat at him. He could see her fangs very clearly as she pulled her lips back to curse and hiss.
“Jules! Comeon! Get with the program!”
He stared at the stake in his hand. “I–I just can’t do it.”
His friend looked incredulous. “What?What’s the problem? You’ve killedhundreds of people before!”
“Yeah, but… but they wasfood.” An inner voice screamed at him that he was being ridiculous-he and his friend were in danger. Any squeamishness didn’t count for a bag of beans. But voice or no voice, he couldn’t make his hand move. “This here-this isdifferent — I mean, she, y’know, she’s one ofus.”
“This is onehell of a time to develop moral qualms!”
The struggling woman kicked viciously at Jules. She barely missed knocking the stake from his loosening fist. “Iknow — I’msorry — but I just can’t do it.”
Doodlebug’s sigh sounded like steam boiling from a braking locomotive. “Ohh-kay-anyother bright ideas about what to do with our charming hostess here would begreatly appreciated!”
Jules gulped hard. He felt horrible. He was useless. Worse than useless. “We could stuff her in her coffin. It’s gotta be around here someplace.”
“Well,find it, then! And hurry!”
He ran through her kitchen, stepping quickly over the broken remains of the bar stool, and peered into what looked to be a bedroom. “D.B.! It’s here! A big mahogany coffin!”
He ran back to the dining room to help his friend half drag, half carry the shrieking, thrashing woman to the room behind the kitchen. Jules was suddenly grateful she’d chosen to live in this crappy neighborhood; none of the neighbors would pay a bout of crazed screaming any mind. He shoved the coffin’s lid open with his foot, then he and Doodlebug forcibly stuffed her inside. As soon as Jules was able to slam the lid shut, he lay on top of it and hung on for dear life.
“Guess I’m the heaviest thing in the house. Look, I’m really sorry about before-”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Doodlebug said, breathing heavily. “Right now we’ve got to find some way of keeping that coffin shut tight. You can’t lie on top of it ad infinitum.”
Jules’s stomach bounced as the coffin rocked. Elisha actually managed to lift the lid and its massive passenger an inch or two, but the coffin’s tight confinement left her no real leverage. “See if you can find some rope or wire,” Jules said. “Maybe a hammer and nails. She’s got some kinda utility shed out back.”
Doodlebug smoothed stray strands of lustrous auburn hair away from his face. “You’ll be all right?”
Jules smiled ruefully. “Sure. First time my weight’s ever done me any good.”
He watched Doodlebug unlock the rear entrance and step into the backyard. After a minute or two, the coffin stopped rocking beneath him. Jules cautiously sat up straight, still keeping his full weight centered on the lid. Then he heard his captive begin to sob. Softly at first, then louder and with greater abandon. It was one of the saddest, most pathetic sounds he’d ever heard.
“Oh Malice,Malice — I donefailed you! I donefailed you, honey dearest…”
What kind of a brother would turn his own sister into a vampire? Jules’s already abysmal opinion of his enemy plunged even lower, if that were possible. He tried not to listen to Elisha’s agonized cries and moanings. The things she was saying… things no sister should ever say or eventhink about a brother. Did Maureen have even the slightest notion of the depraved creature she’d granted vampiric powers and immortality to? The kind of creature she’d shared her bed with?
Doodlebug returned with rope, hammer, and nails. Jules continued sitting on the coffin while his companion drove a score of three-inch nails through the lid and into the coffin’s walls. Then Jules lifted the coffin, one end at a time, while Doodlebug wrapped it tightly with thick nylon rope.
“There… we shouldn’t have to worry abouther for a while,” Doodlebug said, patting his forehead and neck with a handkerchief from his purse. He glanced at Jules’s blood-soaked side, his eyes brimming with concern. “Let’s take a look at that. Is the wound deep?”
Jules gingerly pulled the shreds of his safari jacket and shirt away from his wounded left side. He winced as the fabric, glued to his wound by drying blood, tore open newly formed scabs. Jules kept his eyes tightly shut, afraid to look at his own blood.
“It’s not too awful,” he heard Doodlebug say. “She didn’t tag you that badly. It’s already healing.”
Jules opened his eyes. Now that the scraps of clothing were out of the wound, it was free to close properly. He watched, fascinated and a little nauseated, as his violated skin almost magically reknit itself.
“I saw some interesting things out back,” his relieved friend said. “You need to come take a look yourself.”
He followed Doodlebug out to the storage shed, a large corrugated metal structure that took up most of the backyard. His friend had torn off the door lock. Jules had no idea what to expect when Doodlebug yanked the light string. What was revealed was way,way down the list of what he might’ve imagined.
It was a lab of some kind. Bunsen burners and beakers and glass tubing, the sort of stuff Doc Landrieu might play with. Plus a bank of filing cabinets and three humming refrigerators.
Jules was mystified. “What kinda place is this?”
“It’s a drug lab. A heroin processing lab, to be exact.”
“Heroin?What the heck do a buncha vampires need to fuck around withheroin for?”
“Good question. Let’s try to find out, shall we?”
They spent the next twenty minutes rummaging through the contents of filing cabinets, ledgers, and hand-scrawled notes scattered around the lab. Most of the paperwork dealt with the supply trail and distribution network of a hot new commodity called Horse-X.
Jules broke open the locked bottom drawer of the last of the filing cabinets. He pulled a thick black three-ring binder from the back of the drawer. Almost immediately he knew he’d struck pay dirt. It was a manual describing the care and feeding of a long list of priority clients.
He flipped through the pages. Some of the names slapped him in the face like a bucketful of ice water. “Holy shit! Iknow these people! Knowof ‘em, anyway… Some of these guys are high up in the police department. You got lawyers here who made millions workin’ all them casino deals. Whoa-ho!You got names here that belong to hizzoner the mayor’s top politicos.”
He handed the binder to Doodlebug. The younger vampire spent a few minutes reading intently. “This is bigger than we ever imagined. It seems your friend Malice has his tentacles in nearly every corner of the city.”
“Yeah… Horse-X: It’s not just fer the ghetto anymore.”
Doodlebug closed the binder. “It’s not safe for us to stay here much longer. I’m sure this is a very active little lab. Ms. Raddeaux’s partners could show at any moment. Let’s gather up what we can and beat a prudent retreat.”
They searched for any document that might list a physical address for Malice X, but their hurried survey only turned up the names of lower-level operatives and a series of post office boxes. Jules retrieved a pair of old D. H. Holmes shopping bags from the house, and they stuffed a generous sampling of binders and folders into the bags, including the revelatory black binder.
Back in the house, Jules grabbed utility bills, photo albums, a shoe box full of canceled checks-anything that could potentially provide them with Malice’s connections or current whereabouts. A set of matching coasters next to the drying rack in the kitchen caught his eye. He’d seen them all around the house, but he hadn’t paid them any mind until now. They were all from the same Central City neighborhood bar. Club Hit ‘N’ Run.
He stuffed one of the coasters into his pocket. When Doodlebug came into the kitchen carrying a very full D. H. Holmes bag, Jules tossed him one of the drink holders. “Here’s where we need to head next, pal. Seems like this joint is a popular hangout with Sistah Souljah in the coffin there. Maybe it’s a popular hangout with Brotha Bas-turd, too.”
Doodlebug read the name of the club. He looked up at his partner, and his fire-engine-red lips puckered into a half frown. “Not so fast, Mr. Hooded Terror. Your performance tonight wasn’t exactly what I’d call confidence-inspiring. I think we have a little work to do before we attempt to beard this lion in his lair.”
Jules thought about arguing. Then he looked down at his blood-splattered clothes, scowled, and clamped his jaw tightly shut.
Doodlebug scooted him toward the front door. “Earlier tonight you sent me back to high school. I had such afabulous time. Well, my friend, now it’syour turn to go back to school. Vampire University, in fact. And I just happen to be dean.”